Classical Theories of Work: Marx, Durkheim, and Weber

GS 221; Term 141Department of General Studies,

King Fahd Univ. of Petroleum & MineralsBy Dr. Sumanto Al Qurtuby

Classical Theories of Work The “gang of three” (i.e. principal architect) of modern social sciences: Karl Marx (Germany, 1818 – 1883) Emile Durkheim (France, 1858 – 1917) Max Weber (Germany, 1864 – 1920)

A Brief Overview The three corners of a triangle: whereas Marx concerned himself with

social fragmentation, disintegration, and conflict, Durkheim focused on, and sought to extend, social solidarity, integration, and control. Weber developed his theory of rationality and bureaucracy.

Unlike Weber who emphasized the significant role of agency, both Marx and Durkheim adopted structural arguments that delimited the influence and impact of individuals upon society and social change.

Weber’s individualist sociology was demarcated from the approaches of Marx and Durkheim, who were supporters of anti-individualist methodology.

While Marx disavowed industrialization as the primary explanatory of axis of society, Durkheim supported it.

Marx: A Glance Profession: journalist, philosopher, sociologist, historian, economist,

activist, and revolutionary socialist Education: University of Bonn, University of Berlin, and University of

Jena Family background: Jews, Christians, and a wealthy-middle class

family BUT Marx himself never ran a company, never held political office, and never had a job—throughout his life was supported by his close friend: Friedrich Engels.

Countries influenced by Marxism: Soviet Union (1922), PRC (1949). Notable Publications: The German Ideology, The Communist Manifesto

(with Friedrich Engels), and Das Capital, most of which were anti-capitalism and became the main basis for the ideology of Marxism.

Marx’s Main Ideas (1) Primary concepts (among others): class struggle, human’s nature of

conflict, objectification, alienation, hegemony, materialist conception of history, and exploitation of worker.

Marxism: a philosophy, worldview, and method of societal analysis that emphasizes (1) class relations, (2) societal conflict, (3) materialist interpretation of historical development, and (4) dialectical view of social transformation. 

Marx’s main and initial concern was an analysis of early industrial capitalism in England.

Marx was one of early figures of conflict school in sociology that concerned about analyses of social fragmentation, disintegration, and conflict in the society.

Marx’s Main Ideas (2) Marx's theories about society, economics, and politics—collectively

known as Marxism—hold that human societies progress through class struggle which is a conflict between an ownership class that controls production and a dispossessed laboring class that provides the labor for production. 

Capitalism produced internal tensions which would lead to its self-destruction and replacement by a new system: socialism, namely a social system under which the necessaries of production are owned, controlled, and administered by the people and for the people.

Class antagonisms under capitalism between the bourgeoisie and proletariat would result in the working class' conquest of political power and eventually establish a classless society or communism.

Marx’s Main Ideas (3) For Marx, the capitalist pattern (capitalism) is more important than

industrial process (industrialism), because only capitalism carries within it the seeds of its own destruction and the adumbration (foreshadow) of communism.

Why capitalism and not industrialism? Because for Marx, industrialism produces “objectification”, while capitalism creates “alienation”.

Objectification is the product of human labor on raw materials; it embodies the producer’s creativity and yet remains separate from the producer. Thus, for Marx, some form of production is essential for humanity. However, where the system of production is capitalist, namely where the means of production are owned by a minority, where the majority own only their labor power, and where production is for profit through a commodity market, the result is not objectification but alienation.

Marx on working conditions under early capitalism Workers must do detailed

work. Separation of mental and

manual labor. Monotony (boredom) of

routine, repeated tasks. Labor not creative but

merely concerned with possession.

Marx on Work Ideal work: get self-realization through work no matter

what kind of work it is; work as a personal necessity. Labor for Marx is a source of anti-humanism and

exploitation (of the laborer). Exploitation: a disequilibrium between work and wages;

the value of labor is added to the product and the wage given to the laborer does not correspond with this value. Therefore, Marx stipulated that an invisible “surplus value” is taken by the capitalist.

Type of Alienation (1) Workers are alienated from the products they make. Since the

products are appropriated by the capitalist class, the commodities produced are no longer in the control of the worker. And the more things the worker produces, the less value they have—and thus the value of the work decreases. 

Workers are alienated from their own work. Work is supposed to be human nature, however, under capitalism, work turns out to be a coercive commodity paid for in abstract. The alienation from the act of production itself (deviates from human nature), such that work comes to be a meaningless activity, offering little or no intrinsic satisfactions

Type of Alienation (2)

Humans are alienated (estranged) from other humans because capitalism reduces labor to a commodity to be traded on the market, rather than a social relationship (i.e. social relationship changed into market relationship; competitors).

Worker are alienated from species-being or from humanity and human potential. Note: humans, unlike nonhuman animals, have a consciousness and a will. They have a conscious life activity, and in this activity, humans express free activity. Being self-conscious and making one’s own life activity as the essence of humanity.

Marx on Outcomes of Alienation The more the worker produces, the less he has to consume; The more value he creates, the more worthless he becomes; The more his product is shaped, the more misshapen

(deform) the worker; The more civilized his object, the more barbarous the

worker; The more powerful the work, the more powerless the

worker; The more intelligent the work, the duller the worker and

the more he becomes a slave of nature.

Alienation: Examples…

Emile Durkheim

Durkheim: A Glance Sociologist, social psychologist, and philosopher; along

with Marx and Weber, Durkheim was dubbed the father of sociology; set up the first European department of sociology; and France’s first professor of sociology.

Fields: philosophy, sociology, anthropology, and religious studies

Family backgrounds: Jews; Durkheim’s father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were rabbis. However, Durkheim decided not to follow his family’s footsteps, preferring a secular education to a rabbinical school.

Durkheim’s Major Work Suicide (1897): explores the differing suicide rates among Protestant

and Catholics, arguing that stronger social control among Catholics result in lower suicide rates.

The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912): identify social origin and function of religion as well as classify the links between certain religions in different cultures aiming at finding commonality of religions that goes beyond the concept of spirituality.

The Division of Labour in Society (1893): depict how social order is maintained in societies based on two differing forms of solidarity, namely mechanical and organic solidarity, in which the former characterizes “primitive” / non-industrial society while the later “modern” / industrial society.

Durkheim’s Main ConcernsDurkheim was concerned primarily with three following objectives: First, to establish sociology as a new academic discipline.  Second, to analyze how societies could maintain their integrity and

coherence in the modern era, when things such as traditional, social, personal, and religious ties, as well as shared ethnic background and traditions as commonly practiced in the “primitive” societies could no longer be assumed; accordingly, to that end, Durkheim wrote much about the effect of laws, religion, and education on society and social integration.

Third, to study and understand the practical implications of scientific knowledge.  

Durkheim’s Major Concepts (1) Sociology should become a distinctive, autonomous, legitimate science

that has its own methodology, apart from philosophy or psychology. There is in every society a certain group of phenomena that might be

differentiated from others those studied by natural sciences. A fundamental sociology is to discover social facts; thereby sociology is

the science of social facts, namely a term to depict “phenomena”—material (e.g. physical objects such as a flag that has immaterial social facts) or immaterial (e.g. meanings, sentiments, norms, etc.)—that have an existence in and of themselves and are not bound to the actions of individuals, but have a coercive influence upon individuals that compose society (examples: social institutions, formal laws, customary laws, regulations, religious rituals, family norms, etc.).

Durkheim’s Major Concepts (2) Humans are intrinsically egoistic, but norms, beliefs, and values (i.e.

collective consciousness) shape the moral basis of the society, resulting in social unity and integration.

Collective consciousness, the totality of beliefs, norms, values, and sentiments common to the average members of a society, forms a determinate system with a life of its own. Through collective or common consciousness human beings become aware of one another as social beings.

In a socio-evolutionary approach, Durkheim described the evolution of societies from “mechanical solidarity” to “organic solidarity”. As the societies become more complex, evolving from mechanical to organic solidarity, the division of labor is counteracting and replacing collective consciousness.

Durkheim’s Major Concepts (3) In industrial-modern societies, solidarity was not disintegrated or

dismantled due to transition to industrial life, but rather being reconstructed in a different form.

For Durkheim, modern industrial society actively freed people from isolation and alienation by encouraging mutual dependence through the growing division of labor.

Unlike Marx who argued that the industrial division of labor isolated and alienated human beings, Durkheim was interested in finding the consequences of a complex and advanced system of the division of labor on the cohesion and solidarity of societies.

Durkheim’s Major Concept (4) Durkheim’s contribution to the sociology of work

is basically derived from The Division of Labor. Written as his doctoral thesis, the book grapples with the issue of social solidarity and social cohesion during a time of rapid social and economic transition.

Durkheim disagreed with the popular assumptions of the collapse of social life due to increasing division of labor in industrial societies and urbanization of life. For him, each society has a mechanism to consolidate and adapt with the new social life and milieus.

Durkheim’s Major Concepts (5)

Mechanical solidarity: a type of social solidarity that existed in very “simple-traditional societies” in which individuals were integrated into society through the collective consciousness (common conscience).

Organic solidarity: a type of social solidarity that existed in modern industrial societies in which individuals were integrated through the increasing division of labor.

No necessary correlation between increased specialization (as manifested in the complex division of labor in industrial society) and decreasing solidarity.

Max Weber (Germany, 1864 – 1920)

Profession: sociologist, philosopher, political economist, and lawyer.

Education: University of Heidelberg and University of Berlin. His doctoral thesis was on legal history in Italian cities.

Family background: Jews; his father (Max Weber, Sr.) was a wealthy and prominent civil servant and a member of the National Liberal Party.

Major work: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirits of Capitalism; The Religion of China; The Religion of India; Economy and Society, among others.

Weber’s Major Concepts (1) Weber’s work and ideas are often assumed to be a dialogue with the

“ghost” of Marx, albeit most of his dialogue was with contemporary Marxists rather than with the works of Marx.

Weber’s contribution to the sociology of work lies in several but disparate fields: (1) his theory of social stratification, (2) his interpretative methodology, and (3) his arguments concerning the rise of rationality, the nature of bureaucracy, and the form of bureaucratic control, all of which embrace criticisms of Marxist perspectives.

Emphasize the role of individual agency and its influences on societies, social structure, and social change.

Weber’s Major Concepts (2) Weber’s trilogy of power (i.e. “social stratification”): class, status, and

party. While classes fought over economic issues and status groups contested the distribution of social honor, parties operated at all levels and across all boundaries of class and status. The actual divisions of the three are notoriously slippery, though Weber implies that parties attempt to reconstruct the status quo, whereas class and status groups generally reflect the status quo.

Three types of class: (1) property class, (2) commercial / acquisition class, and (3) social class, all of which are determined by their power within an economic order, capital ownership, and market situation. Hence those who don’t have access to economy, capital, and market (e.g. slaves, unpaid domestic workers, unemployment, etc.) exclude from “class” category.

Weber’s Major Concepts (3) Social class: occupationally based and distinguishes between the

Working Class of labor sellers, the Lower Middle Class of small shopkeepers, etc., the Intelligentsia with little property but technical qualifications, and Privileged Class who owe their superordinate position to property ownership or education or both.

The groups of status, the distribution of social honor or social esteem, are not identical with class groups. Status groups were usually determined by lifestyle, formal education, hereditary, or occupational prestige. In some cases, class provides the material wherewithal for the provision of status symbols.

Weber’s Major Concepts (4) Contemporary society is increasingly grounded in the symbolic and

material advance of rationality. The principle physical manifestations of rationality took three related

forms: capitalism, rational jurisprudence, and bureaucracy. However, the essence of the concept consisted of three facets, namely secularization, calculability, and the growth of ethics oriented to means, not ends.

The rise of rationality means the decline of magical interpretations and explanations of the world, and the gradual elimination of all mysteries, as science exploded more and more mythical assumptions.

Weber’s Major Concepts (5) The rise of rationality also meant the

replacement of “affective” and “traditional” action with “rational” action. People act because of calculation of benefits outweighed the cost OR of efficiency of achieving the goals.

Contemporary society also obey rules because they appear to be built upon rational principles and common sense. For Weber, the foremost example of this form of authority is, of course, bureaucracy.

Weber’s Major Concepts (6) Bureaucracy (i.e. “the administrative system governing any, usually

large, institution”) predated the rise of capitalism (i.e. “patrimonial” bureaucracies of the Roman, Byzantine, and Egyptian empires). However, the bureaucracy was not structured around the rational principles (e.g. free contract, fixed salaries, and delimited spheres of competence).

The primary elements of “modern” bureaucracy include (1) an abstract, legal code of conduct; (2) individual scopes of competence structured within a hierarchy of offices; (3) the non-ownership of offices; (4) selection and promotion through qualifications and proven ability; and (5) fixed salaries with other benefits.

Weber’s Major Concepts (7)

The essential points of bureaucracy are twofold: “legal” (it operates on the basis of “legitimate” procedures) and “rational” (it operates on the principles of expert knowledge and calculability).

Two contrasting sides of bureaucracy. First, it constitutes the most efficient and rational way in which human activity can be organized, and that systematic processes and organized hierarchies were necessary to maintain order, maximize efficiency and eliminate favoritism and nepotism. Second, it has potential to threaten individual freedom, in which an increase in the bureaucratization of human life can trap individuals in an "iron cage" of rule-based, rational control.

Weber’s Major Concept (8) The connection between “rational capitalism” and

Protestant ethic (esp. Calvinism). Capitalism evolved when the Protestant ethic

influenced a large number of people to engage in work in the secular world, developing their own enterprises and innovations, and engaging in trade and the accumulation of wealth for investment. Thus the Protestant ethic was a driving force for modern capitalism in Europe.

The Protestant (Calvinist) doctrine and concept of predestination that eventually led to the rise of rational capitalism.

Concluding Remarks

Assessment, appreciation, and criticism on Marx, Durkheim, and Weber.

The “intellectual and ideological offspring” of Marx, Durkheim, and Weber.